DISPATCHES

OREGON MULLS UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.

Voters in Oregon have the chance Nov. 5 to create the nation's
first universal health care system, where medical and psychiatric
care would be paid from income and payroll taxes. The Washington Post
reported that 4,000 volunteers were working phone banks in a $22,000
campaign to get out the vote. They're up against a $400,000 campaign
raised by the health insurance industry and businesses. Polls have
found the state's electorate split, with 35% supporting universal
health care and 39% opposed in an October poll by the Portland
Tribune. The proposal would raise an estimated $19 billion through
increased payroll and personal income taxes (the state's current
budget is $16 billion), but residents and businesses would no longer
have to pay insurance premiums, which have been skyrocketing in
recent years. Instead, the state would reimburse the patient's choice
of doctors and other licensed health providers, with no co-payments
or deductibles. The measure would add 3-11.5% to the payroll tax for
employers, depending on the size of the payroll, and increase
personal tax rates by 0-8 percentage points, depending on income.
Families at or below 150% of the federal poverty level are exempt.
"What we are proposing is ambitious and audacious, but we believe the
health-care system now is in a crisis," Mark Lindgren, spokesman for
the Health Care for All Oregon campaign, told the Portland Oregonian.
In Oregon, 13% of residents, or 400,000, are uninsured, compared with
42 million uninsured in the USA.

The initiative is part of a growing national grassroots movement
as health care advocates, frustrated with Congress, push legislators
and governors to consider universal care, under which all are covered
by a single payer, and the state or a nonprofit group replaces the
network of for-profit insurance companies and HMOs. In the past year,
universal health care bills were introduced in at least 10 states,
the Post reported, including Illinois and Michigan, while
legislatures in Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have
appointed panels to study the possibilities of universal care.
Maine's governor created a commission to design a single-payer system
and dozens of candidates in Maryland, including governor candidate
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, have pledged support for universal health
care. Universal health care also is being promoted in California,
Washington state and New Mexico. See the Universal Health Care Action
Network (www.uhcan.org or phone 800-634-4442).

VOTERS TAKE INITIATIVES. Twice as many progressive measures
appear on ballots this year as conservative ones, said Kristina
Wilfore, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
(www.ballot.org) . "This election voters will have a chance to
approve policies that we know most Americans support: quality
education, decent wages, the ability to participate in our democracy,
better access to health care, and a safe and clean environment," she
said. Voters in 40 states will have the opportunity to cast a vote on
202 statewide ballot measures &endash; 53 of which are citizen
petitioned initiatives and 147 referred to the ballot by state
governments. Of the 24 states that allow initiatives, the state with
the most issues from the people is Oregon with seven. Three of the
most prolific ballots are comprised of issues referred to the ballot
by lawmakers and not the people &endash; New Mexico, Louisiana and
Georgia. Ballot initiatives and referenda on education reform, labor
reform, election reform and the environment are the "hottest" issues.
Floridians will have the opportunity to vote on two high profile
education initiatives &endash; one to reduce class sizes and the
other to provide universal pre-school. California and Colorado will
vote on measures to allow election-day voter registration. Missouri
and Michigan will vote to allow collective bargaining for
firefighters and emergency personnel (in Missouri) and state
employees (in Michigan). Oregon will vote to increase its minimum
wage and provide for single-payer universal health insurance (see
Dispatches, page 5). On the environmental front, grassroots interests
are attempting to take on big business to create a cleaner and safer
environment with a measure in Utah to tax radioactive waste dumping,
an initiative in Montana to buy electric generating dams and an
initiative in Oregon to require labeling of genetically modified
foods (see page 6.

S.D. GOP FEARS INDIAN TURNOUT. South Dakota Republicans are
fanning suspicions of "massive voter fraud" based on Democrats'
efforts to register Indians on the state's reservations to vote.
According to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, thousands of new voter
registrations have poured into county offices near the reservations,
alarming county officials who rely on their familiarity with the
electorate to weed out questionable applications. One man has been
charged with submitting fraudulent voter registration cards and a
woman who worked as a private contractor with the state Democratic
Party is being investigated. Auditors in 10 counties, all but one
adjoining a reservation, have sent questionable forms to authorities
for investigation, but auditors told the Argus Leader most of the
irregularities are simple mistakes, compounded by the lack of
telephones for many reservation voters, which makes it difficult to
verify information. Even Republican Attorney General Mark Barnett,
who originally played up the alleged vote fraud story, told the Argus
Leader, "I'm still only aware of two cases where criminal law may
have been violated, and you've heard about those ... I just don't
want the suggestion out there that there is widespread fraud when we
don't have any evidence of that."

South Dakota Indians normally favor Democrats, but turnout is
notoriously low. The GOP has extra reason to fear an increased Indian
turnout as, in addition to the tightly fought Senate race between
Sen. Tim Johnson (D) and US Rep. John Thune (R), but also Gov.
William Janklow (R) is running against Democrat Stephanie Herseth for
the at-large congressional seat. Janklow has a long history of
conflict with the state's Indians dating back at least to 1967, when
a 15-year-old student at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school
claimed Janklow raped her. As assistant prosecutor in the state
attorney general's office he was quoted as saying of the American
Indian Movement: "The only way to deal with the Indian problem in
South Dakota is to put a gun to the AIM leaders' heads and pull the
trigger."

USDA LABELS ORGANIC FOOD. As of Oct. 21, a US Department of
Agriculture "organic" seal will tell consumers food has been produced
without pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, irradiation or
bio-engineering. Further, organic farmers will be required to
conserve soil and water to enhance environmental quality and treat
animals humanely. These standards, adopted after 12 years of review,
will apply to US-grown as well as imported food. Labels are in one of
four categories: "100% organic," "organic" (at least 95%), "made with
organic ingredients" (at least 70%) or "contains organic
ingredients." Foods that are 100 or 95% organic have the option of
displaying the new green USDA Organic seal .Small farmers (those with
less than $5,000 in organic sales) are exempt from the certification
process. Organic food sales have been growing at 20% per year in the
past decade, topping $9 billion last year (less than 2% of the
country's $500 billion food industry), according to the Washington
Post. Industry analysts expect that to grow to $20 billion by 2005.
See www.localharvest.org to find an organic farmer near you;
www.organicconsumers.org for information about organic foods;
www.centerforfoodsafety.org for legal, scientific and grassroots
efforts about the impacts of our food production system on health,
animal welfare and the environment; and www.ams.usda.gov/nop for
facts on the USDA's National Organic Program.

FRANKENFOODS ISOLATE US CROPS. Trade reports in October
show US corn export inspections are running 33% behind levels of a
year ago as Europe, Japan and other nations bar crops tainted with
genetically modified organisms, the Financial Times reported on Oct.
15. Dan McGuire of the American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) said
"some US agricultural officials still do not grasp the seriousness of
the issue and suggest that they are 'isolating' the Europeans on this
GMO food issue, when indeed it is the US that is isolating itself."
The Oct. 28 issue of The Nation, using ACGA data, estimated that US
corn farmers have lost more than $814 million in foreign sales over
the past five years as a result of restrictions on genetically
modified food imports.

BUSH SEEKS SEC CUTBACK. Less than three months after
President Bush signed corporate antifraud legislation that called for
a huge increase in the Securities and Exchange Commission budget to
police corporate America and clean up Wall Street, the White House is
backing off the budget provision and urging Congress to provide the
agency with 27% less money than the new law authorized, the New York
Times reported Oct. 19. After years in which the SEC's budget has
barely kept up with inflation, the law called for a 77% increase to
$776 million but Bushites say their proposed 30% increase to $568
million is enough and the extra money should go to the military and
security against terrorism. SEC officials and Democratic lawmakers
say the cutback reflects the White House's calculation that corporate
scandals have begun to recede as a political issue. They say the
administration's more modest increase will not be able to pay for the
expanded role of the agency, bring salaries up to levels at other
financial regulatory agencies, finance the start-up costs of an
accounting oversight board and significantly expand a staff that is
already overwhelmed.

N.C. 'CLEAN ELECTIONS' FOR JUDGES.North Carolina Gov. Mike
Easley (D) signed into law a bill to establish the nation's first
public funding system for judicial elections to reduce the need for
judges to solicit money from lawyers who practice before the courts.
Modeled after Clean Elections systems in Arizona and Maine, the North
Carolina Judicial Campaign Reform Act gives candidates for state
Supreme Court and Court of Appeals the option of running with public
financing of $600,000 if they raise sufficient qualifying
contributions and agree to strict fund-raising and spending limits.
The law also provides for extra funds to participating candidates if
a non-participating candidate or independent group tries to outspend
them. Judicial races will be run on a nonpartisan basis. Groups also
are promoting public financing for judicial campaigns in Georgia,
Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin. For more
details, see publicampaign.org (202-293-0222) or faircourts.org
(202-588-9700).

FLA. VOTE PROBE AIRED. Some of the nation's top Public
Broadcasting System stations will independently broadcast Counting on
Democracy despite the network's refused to transmit the investigative
report. Directed by Emmy award winner Danny Schechter, the 57-minute
documentary follows BBC television reporter Greg Palast as he details
how Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris removed up to 57,000
legal voters -- most black -- from registries five months before the
2000 election. Stations that agreed to air the documentary include
WNET (New York), KCET (Los Angeles), KQED (San Francisco) and dozens
more. (See schedule at www.GregPalast.com.) Another film on the
Florida vote scandal, Unprecedented, opened in October in national
screenings sponsored by People for the American Way, the NAACP and
The Nation. The film, directed by Joan Sekler and Richard Perez,
includes exclusive footage from Palast's confrontations with Harris'
vote fixers.

CONGRESS OKS PAC REFORM. Congress quietly passed a bill to
provide information on how once-secretive political action
committees, known as 527 groups, raise and spend money. It corrects a
two-year-old law aimed at forcing 527 groups, named for the section
they fall under in the US tax code, to report on their activities.
These tax-exempt groups can accept unlimited donations and spend them
on political efforts, including grass-roots mobilizing, issue ads and
direct contributions to candidates. But public watchdog groups
complained the Internal Revenue Service made it difficult to search
these forms. And state and local groups complained they were being
forced to file duplicative reports with federal authorities and state
and local officials. A compromise brokered by Sens. Joseph I.
Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Reps. Kevin
Brady (R-Tex.) and Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) orders the IRS to create a
searchable electronic database of 527 reports that will release
information on a timely basis. The bill will also streamline
reporting so that state and local organizations will not have to file
with federal authorities if they are not involved in federal
elections. Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress
Watch, told the Washington Post the bill was particularly important
given that 527 groups, unlike the national parties, will still be
able under the new campaign finance law to accept large, unregulated
"soft money" contributions after Nov. 6. But now the public will be
able to monitor how these funds are being raised and spent. "Section
527 groups will soon be a soft-money magnet, as they are one of the
few places special interests can send their contributions after the
November election," Clemente said.

HOUSE LEAVES FARMS 'IN DUST'. The US House of
Representatives "left rural America in the dust" as it recessed Oct.
16 for a month-long recess without passing emergency disaster
assistance, National Farmers Union President Dave Frederickson said.
The Senate passed emergency disaster aid three times, with the
support of 39 national farm organizations, despite opposition from
the Bush administration and House leadership, which held no hearings
and allowed no votes. Republican leaderes also blocked inclusion of
disaster assistance in the recent farm bill. Much of the country is
in the midst of the worst drought since the Dust Bowl, while other
areas have experienced floods, insect infestations and disease. As of
Sept. 26, 55.1% of US counties were declared disasters by the
secretary of agriculture. In 2001, 48.6% of US. counties were
declared disasters.

MEMO: FBI VIOLATED WIRETAP RULES. A recently released FBI
memo shows the bureau has frequently overstepped its legal bounds
when conducting national security surveillance. The document, written
in April 2000 and originally classified as "secret," reveals that FBI
agents illegally videotaped suspects, intercepted e-mail without
court permission, recorded the wrong phone conversations, and
conducted "unauthorized searches" in cases requiring warrants under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The declassified
document was obtained by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA), with the
assistance of Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which
discovered existence of the memo while investigating the FBI's
controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance system (see
www.epic.org). The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review
(FISCR), in its first proceeding since being created in 1978, is
considering the legality of new Justice Department surveillance
rules. DOJ has asked the FISCR to overturn a decision of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, which in May unanimously rejected
the government's bid for expanded powers. In its decision, the
intelligence court documented abuses of "national security" warrants
by both the Bush and Clinton administrations, including serious
errors in approximately 75 applications for foreign intelligence
surveillance.

CHENEY BLOCKS 9/11 PROBE. Tearful relatives of Sept. 11
victims urged White House officials not to block Congress' plans to
create an independent commission to investigate the attacks.
Lawmakers are looking to create a commission that would go beyond the
limited inquiry into intelligence failures that the House and Senate
intelligence committees are winding down. After initially opposing an
independent commission, the White House said it supported it. But
Newsweek reported that a few hours after congressional negotiators
hailed a final deal over the scope and powers of a 9/11 panel, Cheney
called House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Porter Goss,
R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Later that day
Goss told a closed-door conference committee he couldn't accept the
deal, citing instructions from "above my pay grade,'' sources said.
Goss later said he was referring to other House leaders, not Cheney.
Goss wouldn't discuss his call from the VP but said it wasn't the
"determining factor'' in his stand. "Our frustration level has never
been higher," said Beverly Eckert of Voices of Sept. 11, reported by
the Associated Press.

PEACE PROTESTERS DO HARD TIME. Protesters arrested for
trespassing at the former School for the Americas at Fort Benning,
Ga., -- including a priest and a grandmother-to-be -- were sentenced
to six months in a rural Georgia jail, alongside thieves and drug
addicts, the Associated Press reported. Formerly, the protesters
served their sentences at minimum-security federal institutions
closer to their homes, where they could visit with friends and
relatives and hold babies in visiting rooms. "The only thing I can
come up with is that they are getting mean," Rev. Roy Bourgeois,
founder of the protest group School of the Americas Watch, said of
Bureau of Prison officials. Rev. Jerry Zawada, a 65-year-old
Franciscan priest from Cedar Lake, Ind., said he's lost 30 pounds
while praying and fasting for peace. He shares a cell with three
other men -- two of whom he refers to as "the Huck Finns" with whom
he gets along fine. "I've never felt threatened," he said. "The Huck
Finn guys are delightful, but they are very simple. They live in a
trailer by the railroad tracks." The protesters blame the Army's
School of the Americas and its successor, the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation, for human rights abuses in Latin
America.

MICROSOFT IMAGINES SWITCHER. Microsoft, attempting to
thwart Apple's campaign to get computer users to switch to MacIntosh,
"gave itself a big, goopy pie in the face" on Oct. 9 when the company
posted a testimonial on its web site called "Confessions of a Mac to
PC Convert." It was purportedly a first-person account by a
"freelance writer" about how she had fallen in love with Windows XP.
She compared the operating system to a Lexus. "I was up and running
in less than one day, Girl Scout's honor," burbled the attractive,
20-something brunette in the photo, according to the New York Times'
David Pogue. "There was only one problem: She doesn't exist." A
computer nerd noticed that the woman's picture actually came from
GettyImages.com, a stock-photo agency. Associated Press reporter Ted
Bridis tracked authorship of the article to one Valerie Mallinson, a
public-relations woman hired by Microsoft to write the story. Caught
red-handed, a Microsoft spokesman told Pogue, "The article was
mistakenly posted to the Microsoft Web Site." Pogue, an authority on
MacIntosh products, noted that the fake switcher was only part of a
longer string of fraudulent Microsoft marketing efforts. In 1998, the
Los Angeles Times reported that Microsoft, during its antitrust
trials, hired PR companies to flood newspapers with fake letters of
support, bearing ordinary individuals' names but actually written by
Microsoft PR staff. Payments were funneled through Microsoft's PR
company so that the checks couldn't be traced. Later, during the
antitrust trials, Microsoft attempted to prove the inseparability of
Windows and Internet Explorer by showing the judge a video. There was
only one problem: The government's lawyer noticed that as the tape
rolled on, the number of icons on the desktop kept changing.
Microsoft sheepishly admitted to having spliced together footage from
different computers to make its point.